Spring has certainly sprung; so much to do in my garden and allotment! Sowing, pricking out, potting on, weeding, planting, realising that I’ve forgotten to sow things – those parsnips will get in soon, honestly…! This morning I noticed the aubergines all need potting on, the sown-much-later-than-usual tomatoes want pricking out and module sown cornflowers, peas, spinach bunching onions and beetroot are just right for planting.
The tomatoes were sown on Wednesday 29th March, a ‘fruit day’, in my unheated greenhouse but on electric heat mats with thermostat controls. Temperatures are still low at night, there have been slight  ground frosts and frozen car windows for the past four mornings; the heat mats protect these tender plants.
All frost sensitive plants are on heat in the greenhouse for now. As you can see in the photos, I sow the tomatoes in rows in a seed tray; this maximises the productivity of each seed tray and saves on space, for now! There are 24 different varieties of tomato – every year I say I won’t grow as many but somehow the seed packets just increase in number … 🙂 Fortunately we all love tomatoes and use them widely in cooking and preserving as well as eating fresh.
The late sowing was due to our four day trip to Umbria, where Charles was one of the key speakers at a sustainable agriculture conference, along with Jean Martin Fortier and Iain Tollhurst. It was strange leaving all of the young seedlings for so long (my young adult sons were in charge of their welfare!) but they were fine and we had a brilliant time in such a beautiful place.
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